French language Q&A Forum

I notice that my answers in this lesson might as well be random.

This lesson opens with the statement:

“In French, there are two different structures to express "reminding", depending on whether we mean to be reminded of [something] or to prompt someone to remember [to do something].”

Let’s call to be reminded of something ‘A’ and to prompt someone to remember ‘B’

The structure of A is:

“rappeler + person one's reminded of + à + person being reminded”

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of A becomes:

”me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + person one is reminded of"

So there are two different sentence structures  for A.

When we want to prompt someone to remember (B), the structure is:

"rappeler + à + person being reminded + de+ [infinitif]”

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of B becomes:

“me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + de + [infinitif]”

Note this involves two different sentence structures in the case of B. 

Each of these sentence structures differ, one from the others, so in fact there are four structures involved in French to express reminding.

As the lesson is presented, a student must retain these four only slightly different structures and identify where to use them in order to progress with this lesson.

Were the lesson split in two - using the A and B situations described above, the student would need to retain and identify only two structures at a time, leading to a better chance of succeeding in A before progressing to B.

I imagine this would lead to this lesson attracting less confusion and improved learning. Or am I missing something? Is there a logic or pattern that evades me?

Hi,

I translated this as 'des activités pédagogiques ' but it was not given as an option. Is pédagogiques incorrect?

A couple of questions:

En forme et en bonne santé- is this a standard spelling despite the masc noun animal?

I struggle with the passive voice..."par" is supposed to be a signal of it....is "the rules have to be established" a passive voice? Why isn't the answer ....is faut que les règles établissent?

Thanks so much for your help with this

Why is the infinitive used in this sentence after 'tout'?  What does this sentence mean exactly in English?

Hi, with s'en aller I get the meaning of an action of going away or just gone away, so quite different from the passé composé but,whereas the passé composé is very structured and always uses the same past participle for the verb the s'en aller expression seems to vary eg je m'en vais,tu t'en vas, giving the idea of a present tense action or an imperfect,IE I/you are going away/have just gone away BUT nous nous sommes est allé  and presumably vous vous étes est allé use the past participle of aller. So ,the question is,does this alter the meaning in any way and is it just a grammatical irregularity which has to be learned.?

In "Tu te souviens de mon ami Alain, que je connais depuis l'école hôtelière", is it okay to use "dont" instead of que?

Thanks!

Is there a complete list of words like: des bals([dancing] balls),
des carnavals,
des festivals,
des récitals,..?

I can't find it on your site.

Thanks in advance, Jaap.

« Elle se maria » [cette année-là] I don’t recognise the conjugation of se marier?

Hi,can anyone please shine some light on the following: " mais n'en espérait pas moins trouver queque Poisson. I think I know that it means " nevertheless hoped to find some fish" but is this a standard expression ?. Myself I would have said au moins (il) espérait trouver queque Poisson. I don't understand the rôle of the n  and moins:  it seems backwards to me, and in a way " not hoped to at least find some fish.